First, it was the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, then the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, then the War for the Planet of the Apes, and now we are at the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes…

I don’t know why we are getting another Planet of the Apes movie outside of the simple fact that Disney is so desperate for money,  that they need to feel like their 71 billion dollar purchase of 20 Century Fox is worth it. One thing that strikes me about the Planet of the Apes movie is that it makes you root against your team.

Despite the film’s attempts at making you side with the Apes over the humans,  audiences could never truly accept that the ‘good ending’ to this series would be the death of humanity…That is unless you think ending humankind is a good thing which if that’s true then that makes you the perfect target audience for the  Planet of the Apes franchise. 

It’s hard to believe that well over a decade ago this franchise started with James Franco and his pet monkey Caesar,  yet here we are 13 years later and now this franchise wants to move completely away from Caesar (Which likely has a lot to do with James Franco’s metoo allegations coming to life shortly after the last film)  and set the timeline many years in the future.

Many generations after Caesar’s death, the apes have split into numerous clans As the humans have reverted to a primal state. Noa, a chimpanzee of an eagle-oriented clan, prepares for a coming-of-age Ceremony until a human who infiltrates his camp inadvertently causes him to break one of his eggs that is needed for the ceremony.

As Noa attempts to retrieve another one,  he is cornered by a rogue ape Clan led by Proximus Caesar,  who kills his father and kidnaps the survivors to bring them to the compound of Caesar. It is there that they realize that the new King Caesar is an ape who wants to advance Apes even further with new technology that they believe is behind the locked door of a former military compound.

Noa and his new human ally Mae are the only two Who can stop Caesar’s plan from being realized which could end up being the end for both human and ape species. My biggest flaw with this entire franchise is the complete negative view of humanity but the franchise holds as a whole.

In the opening acts of this movie, we are reintroduced to a world where the Apes have gotten progressively smarter to the point where they still have somewhat functioning civilizations throughout the world while the humans have gotten aggressively Dumber to the point where they can no longer speak or communicate with one another.

What this dynamic presents is a future conflict between the humans and apes where the humans are trying to regain their loss after the initial infection,  but the human’s Plan of Redemption is viewed in a negative light in the context of the story because the Apes fear that with humans back in charge Wars will Begin Again and some of them might end up back in zoos.

The fear of human control is pretty absurd considering what has happened up to this point with the monkeys running the show and needless to say things haven’t been much better.  For this film,  Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a somewhat soft reboot of this franchise that focuses on an entirely different period in an entirely different character; however, the new character Noa, played by Owen Teague Looks identical to Caesar. 

This creative decision makes me wonder if they changed the character to forget about a certain star’s past relations with this film or if they did it because the franchise had gotten too big to afford Andy Serkis.

When Andy Serkis was the focal point of the franchise, audiences knew that they were getting a great acting performance that could carry the central narrative very well However remove him from the picture and audiences are asked to essentially start from scratch with a lesser actor and a lesser group of characters who don’t hold the same weight as the previous ones.

Freya Allan is the human element of this movie, she Is inserted into this franchise as the girl who is far smarter than many other humans of this time, and like many other films that feature human characters hers threads the line between hero and villain by hanging in the question over the audience’s head can humans truly be trusted?

For a movie that’s almost 2 hours and 30 minutes long the pacing of this film in the first hour is very slow and methodical and takes a lot of time for the audience to sit in with the story. And while the pace does pick up in the third Act,  questions have to be asked about whether it was the best Direction to jump into a franchise. 

The toughest thing about this film series is portraying an antagonist and a protagonist under the same light that both sides are essentially trying to do what is right for their species however they both have flaws and points that leave it up to the audience’s discretion on who they would rather side with.

If you take Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes from a more Mindless popcorn-consuming angle,  you are more likely to enjoy this film in a year that struggles to have a big-name film that plays up to audiences.  However, the flaw of this movie as with many others is that when you begin to apply logic to the world that is created many of the concepts either fall apart or do not land the way that the filmmakers attended.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a satisfiable much of characters, angles, and Worldbuilding however it doesn’t elevate what was already established in previous movies.

2.5/5

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